All I Wanted To Do Was Change This - Jackie Davis-Martin

“Look. All I wanted to do was change this life I was leading.” Even to Mimosa, who was used to making excuses, the line sounded overwrought.

Daisy, her friend of ten or more years, lit a cigarette. Another. This was back in say, 1985, when people smoked. It was what they did. It was hard to explain. “All,” Daisy repeated.

Mimosa knew she would. She herself would have said “All.” So she did, she said it too. “All. I know: all.” She poured herself and her friend more coffee from the plastic carafe on the table. They came here after school on Fridays because of the carafe, of the waitress not bothering them with refills. “You remember.”

“I’m trying,” Daisy said. Daisy had a sweet face, round with blue eyes. She was thirty-one years old, as was Mimosa. In ten years Daisy with her pinkish soft skin would melt into looking sixty, but she didn’t know that yet and so was content with smoking cigarettes and living with her husband.

“You even told me.”

“Told you? Since when did I have that much influence?” Daisy laughed. A passer-by would have said she looked happy or at least pleased. No one passed the women in the booth, though. The diner was fairly empty at 3:30 in the afternoon. “All I said was Shit or Get off the Pot.”

“God, don’t say that again.” Mimosa pushed her features—not as cute as Daisy’s—into an expression that suggested a foul odor had just descended. “I hate that saying.”


Daisy shrugged and blew a stream of smoke diagonally toward the window, which faced a roundabout. This was in New Jersey where they called them traffic circles, and they too disappeared with the cigarettes although there was probably no connection. “The British called these roundabouts,” she observed.

Mimosa said nothing.

“What will you do?” Daisy addressed her question to the window.

“Can I stay with you tonight? With you and Rich?”

“No!” Daisy said. “What on earth would be the point of that?”

“Somewhere to go.”

“What will you do in the larger sense?”

Mimosa reached for a cigarette and her Bic. Her hand shook. “I should stop drinking so much coffee. I’m putting in for a transfer. The other high school, I hope. I mean, I hope it’s not the middle school. I don’t know whether I could do that.”

“And Dr. Alberts?”

“Doctor. That’s funny. I played doctor. Dr. Bob Alberts remains principal.”

“He’s not even attractive,” Daisy said. “And you didn’t even tell me.” She widened her eyes in a brief flash at her friend to indicate the indignity of the secret.

“Why get you involved? Life with Louie was just too boring—I needed to do something.”

“I remember. You’ve been complaining for three years.”

Mimosa glared in turn. “And you’re all happy and everything?”

Of course they both knew that wasn’t true.

“Happy enough,” Daisy said. “I guess.”

“Not to change things,” Mimosa added. “A whole life.” She let one cigarette with the glowing ash of the last. “I’ve never done that,” she said. “It makes me feel decadent.”

“As though you need that,” Daisy said.

All I Wanted To Do Was Change This - E. D. James

All I wanted to do was change a light bulb. Simple. Done it a million times. It would be a little break from dealing with all the problems I have in my life. Problems that stem, by and large, from my lack of discipline and character. So, in a small way, changing that light bulb would be a new beginning too. A small step on the road to respectability. A signal to my family and friends that I was throwing off the demons that had haunted me for most of the past year and reemerging as the productive member of society that they all knew I could be.

I got my buddy Eric to lend me his old Ford F150 pickup that has the rack over the bed and I drove over to Benny’s painting shop and borrowed a sturdy two story telescoping ladder and stopped at Brownies Hardware on the old Main Street and picked up two bulbs, just in case. I wanted to get this thing done as efficiently as possible. Then I headed out to the old neighborhood.

It wasn’t the same out there anymore. Six years ago when we moved in everything was new and booming and everybody was full of energy and hope. We all were drawn to this new suburb by the big houses and the new streets and the big new shopping center with the Target and Best Buy and Home Depot. Prices were going up, up, up and we all bought and put in our lawns and then all of a sudden one of the houses down the street sold because the husband got transferred to another job and we had a bunch of equity and the mortgage broker was calling saying he had a great adjustable loan and we could take out some cash and get a new car and put in a swimming pool and it seemed like it would just get better forever.

Our house was so beautiful. You should have seen the way Meg looked at me when I drover her up to it the first time. We both grew up in the old part of town. Our parents houses were nice, tidy, but small and nothing special. We knew from our first date that we were going to work hard together and get to a better place. She got a job with one of the developers in town as a bookkeeper and my landscaping business started to take off and all of sudden we were getting somewhere. And when we stood on the sidewalk and looked up at that two story neoclassical front porch and the beautiful detailing around the windows, well, I could just tell that every fiber of her being felt fulfilled.

Those first years were great. The neighbors kids and ours were all young and we had big barbeques and parties and helped each other with different projects. I was pretty popular because of with my landscaping business I had a lot of the tools that people needed and I was happy to lend them out on weekends and give folks advice about this and that. I started drinking wine coolers on hot summer afternoons when my body felt a little tired from all the physical labor. Then some of our friends got into wines in serious ways and we had tasting parties and sampled expensive wines and learned all the terms that the connoisseurs knew like “fruit forward” and “strong finish”. Course, the wines that I liked best were “hot”, meaning they had a high alcohol content.

Things kept getting better and better and I put on a few crews and stopped doing any fieldwork. I started marketing. Taking the property managers out to lunch to get the business for the big new office complexes, and housing tracts, and shopping centers that were going up all over. It smoothed things over to have some wine or drink and lunch and some of the guys liked to sneak out in the afternoon and head out to the topless bar over on old Highway 99 and have a few before going home. It was all just business.

Then, one of the guys in that crowd had a big idea. It seems the golf courses that they were building couldn’t keep up with all the tree moving and planting that needed to go on and there was a big machine that could, in one fell swoop, cut a huge hole that preserved the roots, pick an old tree up and move it over in nothing flat. Not cheap. Couple a hundred grand. But that baby would pay off in no time and then the money would pour in the door. That machine caught a hold of me. A whole new business. It would take me to new levels. So I begged, borrowed and scraped everything I could to get that beast. Ran the mortgage on the house right up to the top, found a mortgage broker who had an appraiser that would give him whatever number he needed.

It started off sweet. That first day out there watching that machine do it’s thing was a blast. We popped a few bottles of champagne and went on from there. Then the crash came.

It had been months since I’d been in the neighborhood. The first thing I saw as I turned in at the entrance was that the landscaping along the sound wall was no longer being maintained. About every third house I passed had grass growing three foot tall out front and a for sale sign that barely stuck up high enough to be seen. Our house was the same. The windows were dirty. I could only imagine what the pool looked like. I turned off the truck and just sat there for a minute listening to the heat tick off the muffler. The images of that last night before the sheriff came to move our stuff out onto the street came flashing through my mind no matter how hard I tried to control them. The rage and the anger that boiled up in me over having my dreams taken away from me, the grief in Megs eyes when I told her we were going to lose it, and the disbelief in my kids voices when I told them we were moving in with mom and dad. And then the release that came from flinging that empty Bombay bottle up at that beautiful neoclassical porch and the sound of the light bulb shattering as everything went dark.

Then I pulled the door handle and stepped onto the street and pulled the ladder off the rack and dragged it down and headed off towards the porch with the bag of lightbulbs in my hand. And started over.

All I Wanted To Do Was Change This - Rebecca Link

All I wanted to do is change the momentum. I wanted to change how fast things would move. The anticipation grips me and causes me frustration. I wish I would know the outcome now and would not have to wait. The torment of not knowing makes me crazy. The waiting seems to go on forever. I analyze everything looking back and reevaluating every moment hoping to anticipate the future. I look deep inside feeling intuitive about the future but I find nothing.

Things start to move and start to move quickly. I am ready and it is a rush. I like it and it feels good. Answers. It’s happening not like I expected but maybe better. I like the momentum once things fall into place. I love the ride.

It Didn't Seem Like Much at the Time - Maria Robinson

It was his shoes that attracted her. Sean wore brown suede brogues,with Khaki pants and a purple oxford shirt to the gallery opening in Soho where Martha was working as an assistant curator. The shoes said: I'm English, I'm eccentric, I'm savvy, I'm a dandy, I'm on the make.

Martha was dressed in the tight black, yet assymetrical uniform of art mavens, long coltish legs in Black suede high heels. Her shoes said" I'm art establishment", I can stand in these for hours and do deals, there's a personal trainer in my background and I come from money.

Within three months, the two were standing in the same shoes at their wedding in London. A bright affair at a Universalist hall followed by cocktails and DJ in Chelsea.

It Didn't Seem Like Much at the Time - Shonna Anderson

It didn't seem like much at the time, but I probably should have known that it meant it was the beginning of the end. I had always heard about women receiving the dreaded scarf and gloves set at Christmas and how it was one of the most unpersonal presents one can receive. At least someone cared enough to get a present, but didn’t care enough to think that hard about it. Walk into any store at Christmas time and there they are within easy reach of any man who can’t be bothered to actually think about what to get his girlfriend or wife at Christmas. These thoughts went through my mind at Christmas as I opened the shiny, silver box that he was so excited to give me. “This is it?” I thought to myself. “A Scarf and gloves?” Then I felt bad about my initial reaction as he explained that the gloves were because my hands were always cold and he wanted me to be warm when we held hands and how he had to order the scarf specially because he wanted the green because of how it brought out my eyes. Yes, he painted a pretty picture, but the reality was that they were still a pair of gloves and a scarf, and I should have known it was the beginning of the end.

This Is What Happened After - Judy Albietz

“Whattsup? Why are you looking at me that way, like you just saw a ghost?” asked Josh as he re-snapped his helmet and reached forward to pick up his paddle.

“I don’t know … I just feel like things are a little off, like all these familiar surroundings are somehow different, just a little bit, kinda how you feel when you come home after being away on vacation. Oh, forget it,” she said, digging in her paddle to go back upstream into the rapids. Then Lily sensed it again—the strangeness around her. She stopped moving to look around. Nothing had changed. The trees were still turning orange and brown. High cliffs still loomed over the river and brownish-grayish rocks were still exposed at this water level. But prickles were running up and down her spine and goose bumps had started to form on her bare arms. Something has happened but I can’t remember what … like I’ve been interrupted in the middle of a sentence and now can’t remember what I wanted to say.

“Hey, Lily. You okay? You look pale. Maybe you’re hungry.”

“Oh Josh, it’s not always about food. Be serious; I’m freaking out here.”

“Okay, but just for the record, I think we both need a snack.”

“Josh, you’re so frustrating. You’re not even listening to me. I think I’ve forgotten something … something important … about where I’ve been,” Lily said.

“You haven’t been anywhere but here, right here with me on the river the whole morning. You haven’t been anywhere else. I can guarantee it. Hey, maybe you hit your head on a rock on that last roll.”

“No, I didn’t hit my head,” Lily snapped.

This Is What Happened After - Linda Kunnath

This is what happened after I finally told my Mother off, after 33 years of letting her bully and criticize and hammer away at me for not listening to her, for not taking her seriously, for not calling her, for not being what she couldn’t be herself and causing her to fail all over again. The day she came in, upset that her car had stalled on her and upset when she found out she had a leak in the gas pipe and she described her ordeal word by word, and sentence by sentence, as if the world itself was caving in and not just her gas pipe. I listened to her calmly, working my hand holding a dishrag across the kitchen’s red glossy ceramic tile counter and said, “Well, I guess you will have to take the car into a mechanic tomorrow.”

With that her face turned beet red and she stammered and sputtered out obscenities at me. How could I be so callous, so insensitive to not understand all she had gone through? Why was I acting so arrogantly? Why was I speaking to her in that tone of voice? Who did I think I was anyway? With that, I had had enough and I shouted at her to stop swearing at me and, since she was now staying at my house, I pointed at the guest room and commanded her to go to her room and to go now!

The tide had shifted and she was on my turf now and I had shifted too, mouthing words I could not know were inside of me. I then took the dirty rag, threw it into the metal sink and walked out of the room and went and sat down in the living room.

Moments later I could hear her whistling softly and sensing her presence, Iooked over my shoulder to see she was sitting in the dining room, leafing though a magazine. She sat as calmly as if she were in the lobby of a dentists office, waiting for me as a little girl, while I was getting a cavity filled. She titled her head looking at the glossy colored photos of Jacqueline Kennedy, remarking upon how beautiful she was and did I know that it was Jackie Kennedy who first created the rose garden at the White House?